January 7, 2014: Three-dimensional printers are transforming the business, medical, and
consumer landscape by creating a vast variety of objects, including airplane parts,
football cleats, lamps, jewelry, and even artificial human bones.

Now astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.,
are experimenting with the innovative technology to transform astronomy
education by turning images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope into tactile
3-D pictures for people who cannot explore celestial wonders by sight. The 3-D
print design is also useful and intriguing for sighted people who have different
learning styles. In the 3-D representations, stars, filaments, gas, and dust shown
in Hubble images of the bright star cluster NGC 602 have been transformed
through 3-D printing into textures, appearing as raised open circles, lines, and
dots in the 3-D printout. These features also have different heights to correspond
with their brightness.